State unemployment falling sharply

Friday

Apr 18, 2014 at 12:01 AMApr 19, 2014 at 9:21 AM

The steep drop in Ohio's unemployment rate this year continued in March, pushing the jobless figure to its lowest level in six years. Ohio also posted the biggest decline in the country last month, with the jobless rate dropping to 6.1 percent in March, down from 6.5 percent in February, according to federal job data released yesterday.

Mark Williams, The Columbus Dispatch

The steep drop in Ohio’s unemployment rate this year continued in March, pushing the jobless figure to its lowest level in six years.

Ohio also posted the biggest decline in the country last month, with the jobless rate dropping to 6.1 percent in March, down from 6.5 percent in February, according to federal job data released yesterday.

The state’s unemployment rate is now a full percentage point below where it was in December and down from a recession peak of 10.6 percent.

“There’s a sense from our labor-market people that the numbers stagnated (last year) and have broken loose and are actually catching up with what the job market looks like on the ground,” said Benjamin Johnson, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Last month’s drop in the unemployment rate was driven by both people finding work and others dropping out of the labor force. The number of unemployed workers has dropped by a staggering

14 percent in the past three months to 353,000 people.

Both the jobless rate and the number of unemployed are at their lowest levels since April 2008, a few months after the official start of the recession in December 2007, according to Ohio Department of Job and Family Services numbers released yesterday. The unemployment rate that month stood at

5.9 percent.

The unemployment rate usually doesn’t make as large a move as it has during the past three months. The last time it moved by that much was in early 2009 when the rate was jumping up to 10 percent.

The results keep the Ohio rate below the U.S. rate. For the second straight month, the U.S. rate held steady at

6.7 percent in March.

The declining jobless rate comes as employers added only 600 jobs last month.

The vastly different numbers are a result of how the state tracks unemployment. The monthly unemployment report is made up of two surveys, one of households and one of employers, and the results aren’t always consistent when compared.

The results over time tend to balance out numbers that can be volatile from one month to the next. State figures show employers have added 53,600 jobs over the past year while the number of unemployed has fallen by 68,000.

Still, the number of jobs being created is tracking below the national average, and economists worry about the drop in the number of people in the labor force. While the U.S. should recover all of the jobs lost during the recession in the next few months, economic firm IHS Global Insight is forecasting that the state won’t get back to even for another two years.

“We know over the longer haul a good portion of the drop in unemployment has been people dropping out of the labor force,” said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics near Cleveland.

Even though job growth has been weak, there are good signs, he said.

“We are seeing some kind of recovery. The recovery is broad-based,” he said. “We’re getting some manufacturing jobs, construction is coming back and you see some in health services.”

Despite the drop in the labor force last month, the number of workers has stabilized after falling by about 180,000 workers from 2009 through 2011, state figures show.

“I label this as a positive improvement,” said Michael Brown, an economist with Wells Fargo & Co. “I think the story has begun to change.”

The leisure and hospitality sector gained 4,800 jobs last month, the most of any sector, followed by a pickup of 4,600 construction jobs. The professional and business services sector added 3,200 jobs and private education and health care added 2,400 jobs.

On the down side, the trade, transportation and utilities sector cut 4,900 jobs, manufacturing lost 3,500 jobs and government employment fell by 3,200 jobs.

Unemployment rates dropped in 21 states, rose in 17 and remained flat in the remaining 12 in March. Hiring increased in 34 states and fell in 16, the report showed, the U.S. Labor Department said.

Rhode Island had the highest unemployment rate at 8.7 percent and North Dakota the lowest at 2.6 percent.

The report showed that the unemployment rate has dropped in 46 states over the past year and has risen in four.